[From the Political-Organisational Report of the Sixth Party Congress,
1997.]

1) To summarise, we find that the land question still remains the
major question in many areas. However, as the degree of implementation of land
reforms differs from one state to another, the general slogan of advancing land
reforms also takes different forms in different states.

2) Establishing people's control over common property such as
minor irrigation sources (Ahar, Pokhar, Talab etc.), rivers and sandbanks etc.
is a major agenda of struggle. Generally, feudals and mafia groups exercise
control over them.

3) The questions of wages, equal wages for equal work for men and
women, better working conditions, homestead land and pucca houses etc. are more
or less common demands of the rural proletariat throughout the country. In the
case of land grants it should be demanded that pattas should be issued in the
names of both men and women.

4) Issues of corruption in panchayats, in block offices where
money intended for relief to the rural poor or for the benefit of small and
middle peasants is siphoned off by corrupt officials in league with powerful
landlords and kulak groups who also control the political power are very
important in popular mobilisation.

5) Tribal questions, whether they are reflected through the
Jharkhand movement or in the movements of hill districts and other tribal areas
of Assam, or in the girijan movement in Andhra Pradesh etc. are essentially
peasant questions, and therefore usurpation of tribal land by usurers/merchants,
rights over forest land and forest produce etc., are major questions in these
areas.

6) Wherever the movement assumes intensity, private armies of
landlords or the goons of the reactionary political parties resort to killing
Party leaders and cadres and organise massacres of people. Police atrocities
also invariably follow.

7) Anarchist organisations which are degenerating into
money-collecting machines are indulging in a killing-spree of our cadres and
people, and are using ultra-left rhetoric to the hilt to cover up their dubious
links and their dirty mission of disrupting organised mass movements.

The following points merit serious attention :

A. We think that owing to considerable variations in the agrarian situation,
a general peasant movement at national level, and therefore a consolidated
all-India peasant body, would not have much of relevance. An all-India
coordination body to exchange experiences and occasionally issue policy
statements and organise seminars, workshops etc. is enough. Even in the states,
district or regional level kisan sabha formations may have to play important
autonomous roles, as in big states conditions vastly differ from one region to
another. Demand-specific and area-specific peasant organisations may also play
an important role in mobilising the broad peasantry.

Due attention should be paid to strengthening the organisational functioning
of the kisan sabha at district and local levels. In many areas, kisan sabha
membership falls much short of our influence among the peasantry and is often
even less than the number of people mobilised in our programmes. Live
functioning of the village committees holds the key to the vibrancy of the kisan
sabha organisation, even amidst severe enemy repression. These committees should
regularly convene village general body meetings of the peasant association,
discuss the problems of the movement, and membership renewal -- and even
recruitment -- should preferably be done in GBs. The village committees should
be strengthened with the perspective of developing them as local organs of
people's power. Training local militias and building up of village self-defence
squads should be undertaken in a planned manner.

A legal cell to take care of cases and a special team to maintain contact
with comrades in jail need to be developed.

Where feasible, women's cells should be formed within the kisan sabha
organisations.

Contradictions among people may better be handled by local kisan sabha units
instead of the Party directly plunging into them in the first instance.
Otherwise there remains no authority to which aggrieved sections can turn to and
this results in their alienation. Our experience shows that anarchist groups as
well as forces like Ranvir Sena are quite adept in using such contradictions
against us. Therefore, contradictions among people must be handled prudently and
carefully and through the kisan sabha.

B. The question of agrarian labourers however is increasingly assuming
greater importance in the agrarian scene as well as in national politics. The
demand for central legislation relating to them is becoming a powerful one. The
process of increasing capitalist penetration of whichever variety in agriculture
-- under the auspices of liberalisation and globalisation -- will further push
the question of agricultural labourers to the fore.

Moreover, as sections of intermediate castes are also emerging as important
power groups, the agrarian movement can only find itself confronting
increasingly wide-ranging sections of capitalist farmers and rich peasants.
Movements of agrarian labourers, therefore, shall assume important political
connotations. To prepare for the future, we shall have to organise a preparatory
committee to study the issue in depth and explore the possibility of launching
an agrarian labourers organisation.

C. When we get trapped in wars of attrition against private armies, the
functioning of peasant associations or movements on peasant issues are left
behind. Such a situation is of course forced on us and we can do little to avoid
it. But how, then, to continue the functioning of peasant association is a
paramount question which we have not been able to solve as yet. We repeatedly
tried to use any lull period to activate such movements but no proper mechanism
could be developed. Initiatives from state-level peasant association leadership
at this juncture may be of crucial importance. And demand-specific organisations
may come in handy to tackle such situations.

D. The spate of massacres that we faced in the last few years have raised
many questions inside and outside the Party. The most simplistic formulation was
provided by anarchists and a section of expert commentators living in the safe
world of the media who opined that as CPI(ML) has given up the armed struggle
and taken up parliamentary struggle, landlords are taking up the revenge for the
1970s, i.e., for annihilations carried out 25 years ago! This is highly
mischievous and subjective thinking at its most absurd.

As Marxists we must understand that the emergence of a new breed of private
army and the present spate of massacres are intimately related with the dynamics
of present-day politics. If one probes deeper, one can easily see that the
intensity of operations of private armies is concentrated mainly in areas where
we have thrown up a serious parliamentary challenge to major ruling parties.
Sahar and Sandesh assembly constituencies of Bhojpur and Mairwan and Darauli of
Siwan are such areas. Even JMM (Mardi)-sponsored MCC killings in Bishungarh and
the RJD-sponsored MCC massacre in that part of Chatra which borders Barachetti
were shrewd moves to weaken our electoral prospects. As in both these
constituencies we present a strong potential threat to JMM (Mardi) and RJD
respectively. This is further confirmed by MCC's march to areas of Barachetti
just a few days after the Chatra massacre, and its threatening demands that the
people leave Maley. This was immediately followed by RJD's campaign in
Barachetti asking people to desert CPI(ML). Targeting Bagodar is part of the
same gameplan.

After private armies with the active connivance of the administrative
machinery are allowed to perpetrate massacres, Laloo Yadav reaches those spots
with the compensation packages and calls upon the people not to take up arms and
instead take to education etc. It is in this way that the butcher and the priest
complement each other. Whatever problems the anarchists may pose to the law and
order situation they don't pose any challenge to the political hegemony of the
ruling classes. If in 1970s the call for election boycott was the expression of
extreme revolutionary advance, in '90s it has degenerated into extreme
opportunist betrayal. This is how, dialectically, things transform into their
opposites with the change in conditions. The election boycott slogan of
anarchist groups has come in handy for shrewd bourgeois politicians. There are
innumerable evidences of MCC and PU cadres actively mobilising votes for JD
candidates in Bihar elections.

Then again it is totally false to suggest that we have given up the policy of
armed resistance. The fact is that the general arming of the masses has today
reached a much higher level than at any other time. In hundreds of villages in
Bihar the regular exchange of fire has been going on through all these years of
parliamentary politics. Thousands of our comrades including entire district
committee leaderships have been warranted throughout the state for organising
resistance and have to work in almost underground conditions.

In short, it is not our retreat but our advance as a major force challenging
the economic, social and political hegemony of the forces of status quo that has
led to these sharp attacks against us. It should never be forgotten that
political initiatives, movements on popular issues and developing popular
resistance are the key elements in taking up the challenge of the combined
onslaught of feudal forces and the state. The point is not just to smash this or
that sena by some method or other. More important is to raise the political
consciousness of people, effect a change in social and political balance of
forces and ensure the broadest mobilisation of the people in the process.
Otherwise we will be reduced to being just a militant outfit. Yet, as protracted
armed conflicts are an inalienable part of peasant movement in Bihar, Party must
intensify its state of preparedness. In particular, decisive blows to the enemy
are of crucial importance and armed formations must be organised at a higher
level to deliver these blows.